Warnock: It was all Snoddy’s fault

Two and a half months since he parted company with Leeds United, Neil Warnock’s excuses continue.

This time the former Whites boss has been talking to Sports Direct News, telling them how the sale of Robert Snodgrass cost him his eighth promotion.

“We lost too many points in injury time and we lost Snodgrass when we shouldn’t have lost him,

“We got £3m for him and didn’t spend it. A lot of it was down to Snodgrass wanting to go so late in the window – I had to take him off the training ground so he could speak to Norwich. If he hadn’t have gone, I think we would have walked it. It’s as little a thing as that.”

Most Leeds fans agree that Snodgrass’ exit left a huge hole in the team. The Whites had no recognisable winger for much of the season, played with no width whatsoever and adopted a scrappy, hoofball strategy that soon became predictable.

While Warnock’s excuse has some validity to it, Leeds needed to strengthen on the wing before Snodgrass’ departure. Even with Robert Snodgrass in the side, Leeds still had a serious lack of options out wide, a problem that was exasperated by Neil Warnock’s decision to play Snodgrass in a free-roaming position behind the strikers.

29 Responses

It’s entirely true. How can a side without any real quality in any position expect to compete?
It’s the same whenever we have a player worth selling.
Look at Becchio being sold in january…selling your only regular goalscorer in january is the most cynical and stupid decision the board made. 19 goals by December for those who are about to start callng him shit!

Trouble is, it was Warnock’s job to see these situations coming and prepare for them. He also signed a lot of players last summer, none of which were wingers – something we’d been desperately lacking since Max Gradel left!

If the quotes about Bates (see Joel Ward £100k comment) are true (and no one thinks they couldn’t be true, because of course everyone believes Warnock when he’s having a dig at Bates, Harvey & Williams, but calls him a liar when he says anything bad about any of the players), then it was hardly a summer allowing for advanced planning, in which case his point stands. In the book, Warnock is also quite complimentary towards Snoddy and doesn’t blame him for wanting to move, in the context of how the club had handled the last few season.

Sorry, not sure why it merited an article on its own, but obviously the Colin hate bandwagon has a lot of mileage to cover still. Of course, he’s not helping his case by putting a book out, being everywhere on the radio & TV, but people need to start making their own minds up on some stories rather than rushing to the defence of the saintly Snodgrass, Becchio & McCormack, who could have never done anything wrong and still couldn’t.

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head towards the end of that comment – it’s his constant flouting of the media that grates. Leeds had an horrific season and we’re reminded of it daily by Neil Warnock who has blamed everyone but himself.

I’ve acknowledge how difficult the situation was for Warnock, but the excuses weren’t helping matters, nor was his constant comments about retiring and how hard life was for him away from Cornwall. Always felt like his head wasn’t properly in the game to me.

I think he started off with the right and best intentions, but got into a rut where he neither had enough support to make a decent job out of what he had in mind when he arrived, nor did he take the right moment and opportunity to bail out and point out where the eternal problem lay (late in the summer). I guess he’s too old to change his ways and I do agree about the constant moaning and assigning of blame – I liked the guy but even I got tired of being able to recite his post-match interviews off by heart towards the end.

All that being said, among all the excuses and the obvious favouritisms for his own men, there are some interesting stories which I think are genuine & revealing about some players, and show how little loyalty there actually is in the game nowadays.

Warnock started off with Pearce, £500k and a vision of spending a further £2.5m, then Ward was pulled from under him along with the ‘war chest’ that Bates had outlined to him…. Yes, the takeover blew the season. Warnock always thought he was going to be shopping in Waitrose but having drawn up his shopping list got to to checkout with an empty wallet. He ended up with Bogof and free offers…

He was devastated when Norwich took Snoddy and never recovered from that point. I’m not defending the man, (NW), but his biggest mistake was not leaving the Club in October ’12 and telling all and sundry above him to ‘sod off’. We would have all respected him for it. Bates and the Board would have then had to stand up and be counted instead of Warnock and the Fans taking the secretive and detractive flack imposed throughout.

It is a great pity Warnock has nothing else to do at the moment than promote his book, feeding snippets of no doubt fairly accurate information into a very positive period at LUFC which should be totally Warnock and Bates free.

Yes we missed snoddy, but one player doesn’t make a team.
Warnock also bought players and opted to sell becchio and take morrison who to be fair to him wasn’t fit and had to fill a big hole left by becchio. The board agreed the sale because that’s what warnock wanted so why is it their fault.
We need to get out if the past and start supporting bm and the lads ffs.

If the club had resolved it’s off-the-pitch issues, there would have been a good chance that many of these players would have stayed. However, Warnock hadn’t put together a team formation in which Snodgrass could excel and he should have strengthened well before that reliance on a single player became an issue. This and recent revelations that Becchio (and others, it’s rumoured) no longer had any interest in putting in a shift indicate more serious underlying problems in the squad that Warnock (and others) failed to resolve.

Of course it was Snoddy’s fault. The lack of scouting for suitable attacking options, the prehistoric hoof ball tactics, the public criticism of players, fitting square pegs in round holes, the lack of unity within the club, the lack of fitness of the playing staff which caused us to drop so many points within the last ten minutes of games…. all snoddy’s fault.
Warnock you are an embarrassment. Despite the fact you were not supported by the board does not take away the fact that you are past it. A grubby man peddling a crappy book.

It was Tom Lees’ fault…it was Becchio’s fault…it was Bates’ fault …was Snoddie’s fault…
IT WAS WARNOCK’S FAULT. THE MAN NEEDS TO GET A LIFE AND MOVE ON!!
We have a welcome and overdue aire of well-being at the club with McD. I can’t wait for the season to commence!
MOT

He really is full of the proverbial isn’t he. When you look at the rubbish he brought into the team. The fact is had we lost to Wednesday after he was fired – and it was a close run thing – we would have probably gone down. Snodgrass would have helped us finish a few places higher – perhaps – but that’s all.

F**k off Warnock you played him outa position when you had him anyway reducing his effectiveness. And we all knew he was going in the summer (you must be exceptionally naive if you didn’t know that we are and were a selling club) and for you not to have a winger lined up to replace him is entirely your fault. Now piss off and shut the hell up

Errrr just remind me what NW comments were when Snoddy left! We all ready have a replacement for him in Varney BWHAHAHAHAHA. Varney got off to a stinker even though he did get better later on in the season that’s when he was playing up front not out wide, NW foooked up by not bringing in a propper wide man.

Wecome back TSS.
I can smell the new mown grass as the season approaches.
Snoddy put his loyalty to his family and career, instead of getting behind ‘Soddy’ Ken Bates and his puppets!
Warnock quickly fell into line behind Ken (safest place to be)!!
Bates is entirely to blame for EVERYTHING!

I’m just delighted that we’ve now got a proper Manager and Gentleman in charge. Compare Colin’s outpourings to how Brian Mac has responded in public to his sacking at Reading after what everything done for them i.e. dignified silence.

warnock is trying to sell a book 1stly ..AND it seems the only thing that he deems worthy of talking about in his book ids leeds united what about everything else ..
with or without snoddy what would have happened if we kept him and he got a season ending injury ,the simple fact is there was no B planning .it was awful football all of it and just in my opinion and for the record i believe warnocks biggest mistake was geting rid of lonegran and playing kenny ..Ashdown was a better keeper when he played ..

Warnock saying they didn’t spend £3M for Snoddy, who’s fault is that? Selling Becchio who did that? Habib-whothehellarey-ou who loaned him in and he did sod all?

The fact is Warnock sold our best players, bought average players in for the most part, or his old Sheff U pals first and foremost – then he wonders why Leeds finished mid table….we had a better team under SG even with that w*nk defense we had. But you can’t go back in time….

Hopefully in the here and now McDermott is able to craft a solid team around the nucleus we have right now.

Can’t really blame him for leaving, he’s a fantastic player and person, who deserves to play at the highest level of football, and considering how shit we’ve been run for years now, and the lack of any real investment, you can’t exactly blame him for leaving. A club of our turnover should be in the Premier League already, we’re also a joke in the transfer market.

Seriously, you know things are fucking dire when you can’t even see a club like ours spending a million on a player.

Warnock is full of excuses. He needs to accept that he also made errors and stop blaming everyone but himself. Granted, there have been mistakes, errors, cock ups, call them whatever you want, that have been made by certain parties, but at the end of the day I guess those that made them have to share the blame. That includes warnock. He needs to stop snivelling and get a reality check. I wouldn’t let him manage a subuteo team with his whining. He’d blame something if he didn’t win and it wouldn’t be himself!